Sunday, 19 September 2010

Just published by the wonderful Beautiful Books, is this volume of short stories:

Inspired by Kipling's Just-So Stories, the Just When Stories focus on the animals we need to protect today. There are stories about turtles and cranes, seahorses and chimpanzees, ducks and elephants and dolphins, tortoises and tigers and more.

The stories are published (and there's also a CD of five of the stories) to raise awareness of the horrendous rate at which animals are becoming extinct in our world. I contributed a story to the book because I think we have forgotten that this planet belongs to ALL the creatures, not just us, and I wanted to do something, just a little something, to try to help restore the balance.

One hundred years ago, when Rudyard Kipling wrote the Just So Stories, including his story of the rhinoceros with the itchy skin, rhino numbers stood at around 65,000. Today, fewer than 3,000 black rhinos survive. The same tragic story goes for too many other animals.

The title Just When Stories asks the question: when will the irrational and cruel destruction of wildlife stop? And when will we take action to make it stop? Estimated at between $6 and $20 billion a year by Interpol, the illegal wildlife trade has drastically reduced numerous wildlife populations and has some teetering on the brink of extinction. All profits from the sales of the book and associated media formats will be donated in full to WildAid and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. The authors are: William Boyd, Raffaella Barker, Anthony Doerr, Nirmal Ghosh, Romesh Gunesekera, Witi Ihimaera, Radhika Jha, Hanif Kureishi, Antonia Michaelis, Michael Morpurgo, Jin Pyn Lee, Lauren St John, Kate Thompson, Nury Vittachi, Polly Samson, Shaun Tan, Louisa Young and Angela Young.